How to Use AI to Write a Better Website Redesign RFP for Associations

If you work at a professional association, trade group, or membership-based nonprofit, you know your website is essential for serving members, stakeholders, and the broader community. Whether you're supporting continuing education, annual conferences, policy advocacy, or member recruitment, your site needs to work hard because it’s a primary way to provide value to your members. Plus your site is a primary method of reflecting member value to your member base.

If your site isn’t delivering as much value as it could, you can remedy that by redesigning it. But first, you need a solid plan, which often starts with a website redesign RFP.

Writing a Request for Proposal (RFP) can be time-consuming and complex, especially if multiple departments, volunteers, or board members are involved. The good news is that AI can help.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use generative AI to streamline the RFP-writing process for your association’s website redesign and ensure it reflects your strategy, not just your specs.

Why Associations Struggle with Website RFPs

RFPs are meant to bring clarity. However, in many associations, they become:

• A patchwork of past proposals and boilerplate language
• Too vague with requirements or goals to guide vendors
• Too rigid to invite strategic input
• Stuck in review purgatory with committees and stakeholders

AI helps break the cycle by offering structure, speed, and clarity. This lets you focus on high-level alignment and goals instead of sentence structure.

Six Ways to Use AI to Write a Better RFP for Your Association’s Website

1. Generate a Draft Outline

Start by prompting AI with context:

“Create an outline for a website redesign RFP for a professional association that wants to increase member engagement and improve access to educational content.” 

The output will give you a clear skeleton that covers essentials such as goals, target audiences, content management system (CMS) needs, integrations like association management software (AMS) or learning management system (LMS), content strategy, and evaluation criteria.

2. Clarify Member-Centered Goals

Not sure how to phrase your objectives in the RFP? Try this prompt:

“Rewrite this goal to be more actionable: ‘We want to better serve our members online.’”

AI may suggest: “Our goal is to deliver a more personalized, mobile-friendly web experience that helps members quickly find events, certifications, and industry resources.”

3. Describe Your Audience Segments

Associations serve diverse groups, including members, non-members, students, exhibitors, and policymakers.

Ask AI:

“List five core audiences for a healthcare association’s website and what each needs most from the digital experience.”

This helps strategically focused agencies tailor their approach.

4. Refine Functional Requirements

If your team struggles with technical language, let AI help with this prompt:

“Write a requirements section for integrating the website with our association management system (AMS), including single sign-on (SSO) and member dashboards.”

Or:

“Explain what should go in the CMS requirements section of an RFP.”

This ensures your draft is clear and complete.

5. Clean Up Draft Language

After combining input from staff, committees, or volunteer leaders, ask AI to do the following:

“Rewrite this RFP draft in a more concise, professional tone without changing meaning.”

It’s like having an editor who works instantly and never tires.

6. Check for Gaps and Oversights

Before circulating your RFP internally or externally, try this prompt:

“Review this RFP and tell me what’s missing or unclear based on best practices for association website redesigns.”

AI can identify missing evaluation criteria, timeline issues, or inconsistencies across sections.

Sample AI Prompts for Association Website RFPs

Here’s a starter list to try in tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, or Gemini:

• “What should a website redesign RFP for a membership association include in 2025?”
• “Write a project overview for a national engineering association’s website RFP.”
• “List common integrations needed in association websites.”
• “Create a scoring rubric for evaluating vendor proposals for an association website redesign.”
• “How can we describe accessibility, personalization, and event search requirements in our RFP?”

What AI Can and Can’t Do for You

AI will:

• Give you a strong starting draft
• Help you clarify fuzzy ideas
• Save time editing or formatting
• Fill in gaps and improve tone

But AI won’t:

• Understand your internal politics or approval processes
• Replace real stakeholder interviews or user research
• Surface aspirational parts of your redesign gleaned from member outreach or surveys
• Make judgment calls on timeline or scope

Use AI as an accelerator, not a substitute for strategy or alignment.